A great leap forward: closing out his illustrious career at New York City Ballet, Jock Soto opens up about his future as a gay man.

For more than 20 years, he's been a star in the most elite realm of classical ballet. But his name is more like ESPN. Jock Soto was only 16 years old in 1981 when Peter Martins, then--ballet master (now director) of the New York City Ballet, plucked him out of the company's school. Just four years later Soto was promoted to the troupe's top tier of dancers.

"At that time I was the youngest principal. I was in shock. It was hard to live up to," says Soto, who is half Navajo Indian and half Puerto Rican. "But I never call myself a star, I'm just a dancer."

After a career in which Soto estimates more than 100 new ballets have been made specifically on him, he retires this summer at age 40. His final performance, June 19 at Lincoln Center's New York State Theater, sold out almost two months in advance.

Onstage virtually the entire night, Soto will dance an unprecedented line-up of five ballets including classic pieces by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. "I've never done five ballets in a row," says Soto with both fear and excitement. "I may have to have a wheelchair at the side of the stage."

Soto's resilient body has already borne the brunt of his long career. "The cartilage in this knee is deteriorating. I've had many back problems, I have neck problems, I tore a ligament in my wrist ... it's nonstop," says the artist, whose support team includes a chiropractor, a physical therapist, a trainer, and an acupuncturist. "I've been lucky--I've never broken anything."

Soto will be missed by more than just his fans. He's known as a consummate partner to ballerinas. "There's a certain trust level with Jock," says City Ballet star Wendy Whelan. "He's incredibly sensitive, but he's got brute strength."

Male dancers count on him as well. "Jock always knows his stuff," says fellow principal dancer Nikolaj Hubbe, who is also gay. "In hard ballets with counts and millions of steps, there was always Jock.... He's a leader onstage."

Soto is quick to dispel the myth that all ballet dancers are gay, estimating that at City Ballet there's a 50-50 gay-straight mix among the men. Whatever the persuasion of his colleagues, Soto helps keep the work atmosphere friendly. "Straight guys always like to joke and flirt with me. I'll say, 'Oh, would you come out already?' But it's easier for us to tease them because we can always come back with a dishy remark."

Throughout the 1980s Soto was a regular performer at AIDS benefits, but remarkably he never came out in the gay press. He claims that he simply wasn't asked, and adds, "I think everybody just knew."

Since 1996, Soto has been on the faculty of the School of American Ballet, and he plans to continue. "Teaching comes so naturally to me," he says. But he's setting his sights on the food business, a passion fed by his 30-year-old boyfriend, wine importer Luis Fuentes. They met two years ago at Park, a Manhattan club.

"I was single and hanging out. I saw this man wearing a suit and tie ... I went up and said, 'What's with the tie?'" A few nights later, after attending a ballet performance for the first time, Luis took Jock out for a late supper that included some fine red wine. Only later did Soto learn that it cost $300 a bottle.

"I can say that I drank very, very good wines from then on," says Soto, who likes to stay home on the nights he's not dancing. "We have a tiny studio, but I've had 10 or 20 people for dinner." Festive food for large groups is the theme of Our Meals, the 1997 cookbook Soto wrote with Heather Watts, who was his regular ballet partner throughout the 1980s.

For about a decade Soto and Watts, along with Watts's husband, Damian Woetzel, also a City Ballet principal dancer, have shared a country house in Connecticut. "We still share a dog," says Soto, "but I haven't been there in a while, because I'm so busy ... getting my life together to move on."

For Soto, retirement is just the curtain going up on the next phase of his life. "I've never felt more secure than I do now about where I am, about leaving my life and that box of a theater and moving on. There are so many other options out there, I'm ready," he says. "Five years from now I will hopefully have a very successful show on the Food Network--an openly gay chef that people remember sometimes used to dance."

Dalton is a music critic and arts reporter for the Albany, N.Y., Times Union.